The committee developed the proposals during its annual meeting July 15-19 at Lake Placid, New York.

The rationale for eliminating the regional advisory committees is that the rankings obtained from this system were overly subjective and that the regional advisory committee members' reporting of rankings often was inconsistent. The Division I lacrosse committee's use of the Rating Percentage Index (RPI) also provides a more unbiased version of the same information.

The Division I committee would select and seed its championship field primarily using the RPI. The criteria would be as follows:

The "normal" RPI rank, based on the entire Division I schedule.

For a team to be considered for at-large selection under those criteria, it must have a .500 or better record against all opponents. If the committee cannot make a decision using the primary criteria, the secondary criteria of head-to-head competition and results against common opponents would be used.

Under the current system, the men's lacrosse committee, which consists of a portion of the members of the respective divisional committees, spends an inordinate amount of time on playing rules. This leaves little time for administration of championships, which is the current committee's main function. Both the rules and championships roles are likely to expand in coming years.

With regard to playing rules, the committee expects equipment issues to become more technologically complicated, which will cause an increase in the amount of time necessary to develop effective, pertinent rules.

With the advent of automatic qualification and the uniqueness of holding all three championships at one site, plus the possibility of using new sites, the committee also sees its demands with regard to championships continuing to expand.

The committee postponed this year's rules decisions regarding new equipment -- primarily sticks, shoulder pads and gloves -- until a special meeting that the committee is requesting at Gettysburg College November 6-7.

Provisionally passed a change for 2002 that will permit calling a timeout only when a player has possession of the ball in his offensive box with his feet on the ground. The committee believes this is the best way to solve the problems that coaches and officials have had administering timeouts directly after a face-off, particularly during the closing moments of a period and especially during overtime. Under such circumstances with the current rules, which require possession anywhere on the field in order to be granted a timeout, coaches have had difficulty getting the officials' attention because officials are busy overseeing the most critical part of the game. Officials have had difficulty in determining whether possession has been sufficiently established for a timeout to be granted. A survey on the potential change for 2002 will be mailed to coaches, and the committee will decide on the issue no later than September 12. Surveys not received by the national office by the deadline will be interpreted as support for the change.

Determined that high-visibility green will be added as a legal color of ball. The committee also will request that the USILA use this color of ball in fall scrimmages and provide feedback to the committee. The committee will then determine if it wants to make the ball the official ball for all championships, effective in 2003.

Discussed uniform issues in each division as follows:

Division I -- For all tournament games, the highest-seeded team shall be designated the home team and shall wear its white or light-colored uniform. If the Division I lacrosse committee determines that the uniform colors of the two teams are not sufficiently contrasting, the higher-seeded team must change its jersey.

Division II -- The highest-seeded team in each region (regardless of which team is the home team) will wear white or light-colored jerseys for the semifinals. The home team will wear its white or light-colored uniform for the championship game. If the Division II lacrosse committee determines that the two teams' uniform colors are not sufficiently contrasting, the higher-seeded team must change its jersey.